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Schools and Education General Discussion
Whitman district and race
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Anonymous
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OK, we're considering a home in the Whitman district. Right now, DC (white) go to a school that is very diverse, which makes us happy. The elementary school district we would move to is 90% white and 95% rich. This makes us feel queezy and worried we're setting our kids up to be uncomfortable around people who are of different races. Not racist, just unfamiliar.
How have others in the Whitman district dealt with this? |
Anonymous
| We had a similar concern and chose to send our children to a diverse private school for k-8. One will be entering Whitman next year but I feel like the groundwork has been set so that the lack of diversity won't be as much of a problem. |
Anonymous
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The fact is that the area is 90% white. If the school is a neighborhood school than the school will naturally also be 90% white. Manipulating the student body to reflect otherwise looks phony and sets up a wierd feeling of students being bused in to fulfill quotas.
Application-based schools can shuffle things around. In public by virtue get what they get. Your children will grow up with the values and attitudes you give to them. As long as you expose them to life outside their neighborhood and school, you are doing your best. And I live in the Whitman cluster. |
Anonymous
Of course not even Whitman is 90% white. Not sure what it says about you, or your efforts to do your best, that you think it is and that would be fine. |
Anonymous
| Then move to a diverse area like Silver Spring. |
Anonymous
| I thought Whitman had a large, 25%, chunk of Asian students? No? |
Anonymous
My sense is that many of those who are really worried about diversity do not consider a significant Asian population, on its own, as sufficiently "diverse" to count. I've never quite understood this. |
Anonymous
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76% white, 5% AA, 7% hispanic, 12% Asian. Actually nice to see because our elementary feeder was much less diverse than this mix. Still less diversity than my DCs current private which is about 50% non white. I think Whitman is only 2% FARMS.
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Anonymous
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According to the enrollment sheet on MCPS -
Whitman is 75% white, 4.4% AA, 13% Asian, and 6% Hispanic. The proficiency rates for AA at Whitman is startling and something I would be truly concerned about if I were an AA parent putting my child at Whitman. Full disclosure, I am a Caucasian parent who purposefully chose not to look for houses in Whitman cluster because of bad press about race relations and this type of disparity that Whitman and it's MS feeder has received over the past few years. We bought a house in WJ Cluster - 62% white, 14% Asian, 13% Hispanic and 9% AA. The proficiency disparities are not nearly as startling between AA and Caucasian or Hispanic or Asian. I don't know why the disparity is so stark at Whitman vs. say, WJ, but it would be a concern for me. To find this type of info - go to the MCPS web page http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/schoolodex/schooloverview.aspx?s=04424 |
Anonymous
My numbers in the prior post came from the Whitman 2009-2010 profile on the school website. |
Anonymous
| Sorry, I was rounding, and I wasn't contradicting you, pp - I was posting at same time as you were, so I didn't see your numbers re 09-10. Pretty much the same. |
Anonymous
| The B-CC district is generally a LOT more diverse, and those schools have excellent reputations as well, if you want to look at what's available there. |
Anonymous
| OP Here, We were looking in B-Cc district for 3 years, and finally decided unfortunately, the B-CC district is too expensive for us =). Ironic, no, that we're paying less to live in a nearly all-white neighborhood! |
Anonymous
I am a minority Whitman grad, and for the reasons that you noted, we are looking in the WJ district. |
Anonymous
How is that diverse? 9% AA versus 62% white? |